Moments of Beauty: The Art Portfolio of Bill Sharp
Centennial Mills as it Was, oil on panel
Bill Sharp is a Portland-based artist who works in oil paint, watercolour, and gouache. The artist’s works capture landscapes of Oregon and western North America, with a lens toward exploring the seemingly mundane moments of beauty that make life worthwhile.
I really enjoy the artist’s style of working with oil paint. In his landscapes and paintings of architectural features, Bill employs heavy, confident brush strokes that are more layered than blended, emphasizing the thick, heavy texture of the oil paint in a way that captures an impressionist view of a subject while delighting in the materiality of the paint. In terms of subject and composition, Bill’s paintings remind me somewhat of Harry Stooshinoff’s landscapes -- focused, well-composed, somewhat abstracted images that capture a single moment in time; a memory; an emotion.
Bill’s watercolour and gouache sketch work feeds into his more polished gallery of oils -- browsing through these images, one can get a sense of the planning phases of the oil works, but also of how Bill’s style translates into quicker-drying, perhaps less forgiving traditional media.
